


Touch

by jdjunkie



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-24
Updated: 2011-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-15 01:20:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdjunkie/pseuds/jdjunkie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eleven scenes with the common theme of touch, charting Jack and Daniel's relationship through the years</p>
            </blockquote>





	Touch

**Season One**

 _The Nox_

It was more than a little odd, knowing you’d come back from the dead.  It was heading for utterly ridiculous to know that you’d now done it twice. Daniel took a moment to ponder the unlikely direction his life had taken while he filled his coffee mug. Just another day at the office. Just another death on an alien world. He wondered if it would ever get old. Somehow, he suspected not.

He took his filled mug back to his desk and sat down. Rows of Egyptians danced their way inexorably across his computer screen. He watched the little figures and let his mind wander while he sipped and swallowed and vowed to bring in his own coffeemaker. Base coffee was disgusting.

Sam had been dead. Jack, too.  He wondered how they felt about that. They hadn’t mentioned it, beyond what was said matter-of-factly in the debriefing _. “Apophis’s  staff weapons took us out one by one, Sir. Me first, then Carter, then Daniel. Or so I’m told. I was dead at the time.”_ Jack had dealt with the simple matter of his own and his team’s deaths in a way that was uniquely Jack-like. Still, the whole thing niggled and unsettled Daniel.  Everything – the missions, the planets, the races and cultures -- was all so new and amazing. His head whirled with the thrill of each new discovery.  His team, his _friends_ , were his single point of reassuring constancy. Jack, in particular, had come to embody that. That was forcibly brought home to Daniel when he’d woken Jack on the Nox world.

He’d reached out and laid a hand on his head. Jack’s hair had felt a strange mix of silky and spiky, soft but regulation short. Sitting here, hours later, he could still feel the texture of the strands. Unconsciously, he rubbed his fingers together. Clearly, being dead did strange things to a person.

He shrugged. Jack was alive and that was all that mattered.

His telephone rang and he reached to answer it.

Yeah. Just another day at the office.

 **Season Two**

 _The Serpent’s Lair_

The amber liquid in the half-empty bottle was so fucking seductive, but hey, he was celebrating.

He was celebrating alone, but he was celebrating nonetheless. Because Daniel Jackson, the original Comeback Kid had ... come back. Seemingly from the dead. Now _that_ was worth a shot of anyone’s favorite scotch, so Jack poured himself another. His fourth? Fifth maybe, he wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter a whole bunch anyway. Daniel was alive. He raised his glass and slurred an ironic, “Slainte.” Health. Yeah. Try to stay in one piece this time.

He really didn’t need to indulge in any more overt displays of affection in front of the whole fucking SGC. He didn’t need to feel the length of Daniel’s warm, living, breathing body pressed against him in a hug that went on too long and revealed too much, to Jack himself if not to a room full of Marines. And he certainly didn’t need to hold Daniel by the head and look into trusting, blue eyes that seemed to say, “Sorry. I’m kind of embarrassed that I’m actually alive after you, you know, said goodbye the way you did.”

Daniel had trembled under Jack’s hands throughout the embrace, through relief or displaced fear Jack had no idea, but he’d felt the tremors through layers of clothing and more than anything he’d wanted to shield Daniel’s naked vulnerability from the eyes of others. It mattered so much that he’d given the assembled masses something else to think about instead. _Spacemonkey, yeah._ Lots to ponder there. Knock yourselves out.

Jesus.

Even in his semi-drunken state, Jack was still self-aware enough to know that what was going on here was something other than celebrating.

Celebrating was a handy excuse for this party for one. No.  Honestly, deep down, right down there, buried where he didn’t want anyone to see, Jack was mourning. He, Jack O’Neill, commanding officer, the man responsible for his team, had left Daniel bleeding and terrified on the floor of an alien spaceship. Daniel had trembled then, too. Jack had felt the shocky, clammy skin of Daniel’s face under his fingers and tried not to remember how wonderful  it felt to touch him at all.

The alcohol burned its way down his throat. The fact that Jack had left Daniel to die, had cradled his precious, beautiful, face in his hand in a moment that comforted him more than Daniel, burned even more.

Jack downed the remains of the single malt.

 _Cheers._

 **Season Three**

 _Forever in a Day_

Jack didn’t break easily. In a life that had rarely been easy, he’d been able to withstand physical pain in the service of his country and the unimaginable emotional pain of losing his son.

But seeing Daniel touch the face of his dead wife, the way his fingers gently traced the beloved features with such aching tenderness, was nearly his undoing. This touch had to last Daniel a lifetime; his final moment of connection to the woman he’d loved and lost. Jack was hit by the realization that he couldn’t bear the thought of Daniel never being touched in love or kindness again.  It was unthinkable. Unconscionable. And there was no way in hell he should be thinking along those lines at all.

Daniel’s final profession of love was unutterably moving. His life was falling apart and Jack could only stand by and watch it happen.

“Teal’c?” Jack asked, because he needed some kind of confirmation that Daniel was going to be okay.

“Daniel Jackson will be fine.”

He damned well would. Jack would make sure of it.

 **Season Four**

 _The Other Side_

He couldn’t wait to be out of here. The whiff of moral corruption was polluting the very air he breathed. He didn’t much care if the whole lot of them died here. He cared a great deal about a lot of things, too much sometimes, but as of this moment he was tired of being the lone voice of reason, especially when it was a voice that no one wanted to listen to.

Jack certainly didn’t hear what he wanted to say. Okay, he was pissed that Daniel had pushed Alar for answers to difficult but necessary questions in a very public way, but that didn’t fully account for the shitty way Jack was treating him these days.

Well, fuck Jack. Fuck his condescending attitude, and fuck him for making Daniel question his role on the team.

Daniel punched the first of the glyphs on the DHD. Focused fully on the task at hand, he was unaware of Jack beside him until his hand was taken and prevented from completing the dialing sequence. For a second, he couldn’t respond at all. It was too shocking, the feel of Jack’s warm skin, the strength of his grip and the slight tremble. Jack was angry.

“We’re not going,” Jack said, voice low and even, despite his obvious fury.

“Why?” Daniel managed eventually, still overwhelmed by the sensation of Jack’s hand on his.

“Teal’c and I are going to have a look around first. You ... ask questions.”

 _What, what the fuck? ... Now you’re saying this?_

“I thought you told me to...”

“I know what I said, Daniel . It was rude and short-sighted and I’m sorry.”

Wow. An apology. _“Sorry for telling me to shut up, or sorry for treating me like I count for nothing lately?”_

“Well, uh, thank you for recognizing that.”

“Now I’m saying this. Go ask questions. Lots of questions.”

And he was gone.

Daniel had no idea what the hell had just happened. His body reverberated with the unexpected touch of Jack’s hand and the fact that a simple gesture, whether made out of necessity or not, could have this kind of effect on him.

He took a deep breath and dragged his mind back to the mission. He set off to find Farrell. Maybe he’d have some luck in drawing information out of her. Anything else would have to wait.

 

 **Season Five**

 _Meridian_

Through the haze of pain medication, Daniel was aware that Sam’s hand was on his shoulder. It felt unbelievably comforting.

No one had touched him with gentleness since his body had started falling apart from radiation poisoning. No one could touch him at all at first, then he was dealt with professionally and clinically, but there had been no room for the comfort he longed for.

Daniel was glad she felt able to reach out to him.

“I don't know why we wait to tell people how we really feel.” Sam’s voice was breaking, her tears falling.

 _“I don’t know either, Sam. But I know I’ve left it too late with the one person who really matters.”_

As a teardrop landed on a blood-soaked bandage, Daniel knew.

It wasn’t Sam’s touched he craved.

 **Season Six**

 _Abyss_

He owed it to Jack to stay, even though the sound of his screams was ripping his heart to shreds. Over and over, the horror played out before his all-seeing eyes and there was nothing he could do to stop it, at least, not directly. He was working on it.

Daniel stood sentinel over Jack’s newly-revived body as he lay on the floor of Ba’al’s cell. He looked restful in sleep, his face relieved of the pinched look that accompanied the pain. But he appeared ... older, physically. The lines around his eyes were a little deeper, his face a little thinner. Was that Daniel’s doing? Had his loss meant that much?

“I love you,” Daniel whispered, having no idea he was going to say that until he actually said it. He immediately felt awkward but found that he needed to say the words he’d never been able to say back when he could have.  Should have. He shoved his hands in his pockets and searched the tiny room for inspiration. He should be good at this words stuff. It used to be his job. “I wish you knew that. I wish you knew that you were the burden that was the hardest to release, and even now, I’m not sure I’ve really let you go.”

Jack stirred, and Daniel witnessed the terrifying split second when all the pain and hopelessness came flooding back to him. God, he wanted to hold him, to fold him up in his arms and rock him, back and forth, keep him safe, just as Jack had done for him, once upon a lifetime ago. His arms ached for the want of him.

Jack mumbled something, apparently talking to someone else, a woman. But there _was_ no one else, only Daniel.

Time to step up his game. Jack needed to get out of there. Daniel began the challenge of persuading Jack to stay alive long enough for him to find a way.

 **Season Seven**

 _Heroes_

Daniel had never looked more unreachable than he did during Fraiser’s memorial service.

Jack stood across from him, trying to concentrate on Carter’s carefully chosen words, but found his gaze and his mind stubbornly fixed on the closed-off man standing across the gateramp from him.

Daniel had not spoken of what had happened off world. Every time Jack had broached the subject, Daniel had found something vitally important he needed to be doing right now.  But Jack had seen the tape, so Jack knew. Daniel had watched Fraiser die. Jack could hear the chilling echo of Daniel’s screams for a medic even now.

Jack closed his eyes and tried to home in on Carter’s voice. She was reading a list of names of people who were alive because of Fraiser. He opened his eyes as Carter said Daniel’s name. Daniel flinched as though the words were physically assaulting him, battering him with the vestiges of his pain and guilt; he was alive, he was on the list, there shouldn’t _be_ a fucking list, Janet should be in her infirmary, dispensing medicine and pithy advice with her customary equanimity.  Jack could read Daniel like a book.

The slight physical recoiling from Carter’s words would have been barely noticeable to anyone else, just like the tension in his shoulders and the way his brow furrowed a little as the last syllable of his surname made way for the next name ... his own, actually.

Somehow, they made it through the ceremony.  While everyone hung around at the end, waiting to see what happened next, as was the way with these things, Jack congratulated Carter on her speech and gave Teal’c a look that said, “Keep an eye on her.”

He looked around for Daniel, just in time to see him disappearing out of the gateroom, Hammond walking by his side. As they started to round the corner, Hammond’s hand went to Daniel’s shoulder and rested there briefly.

Daniel shrank from the touch.

Daniel was shrinking away from all of them.

They’d just got him back. Jack had just started to feel whole again. He couldn’t lose him again.

 

 **Season Eight**

 _Icon_

“You’re back.” Jack gently but insistently pushed his way past Daniel and Daniel’s front door into the living room of Daniel’s house. He plonked a six pack on the coffee table and took off his jacket. It looked like he was staying for a while.

“I am.” Daniel closed the door quietly.

“Guess it got a little squirrely after all.” Jack stood in the middle of the room and carried out a surreptitious recon. Not much to see; an open laptop, pile of dirty laundry on the couch, some overdue library books and a nearly-full bottle of red wine. One glass.

“Yeah.” Daniel tried not sound tired, but he was and he couldn’t hide it. It had been a hell of a mission.

“I hate it when things get squirrely,” Jack said, the lightness of his tone betrayed by the direct look he was currently giving Daniel.

“It wasn’t exactly a bed of roses for me either.”  It was, all things considered, something of an understatement.

“I brought beer. Thought you might like some company.” Why did it sound like Jack was going through the motions, just saying words as a precursor to something else? “But it looks as though you’ve hit the grape rather than the grain.” Jack indicated the wine bottle.

“It’s just a bottle I bought a while ago. I’m not really ... um, have you eaten?”

Jack looked thoughtful. “That’s usually my line.”

“Is it?”

“It used to be.”

“Oh.”

“I guess some things will never come back. I mean ... it’s been a year.”

“I don’t know. I guess I’ll never know for sure.”

“Kind of, how do you know you can’t remember something ...

“If you can’t remember it.”

“Yeah. That.”

They lapsed into a silence that grew heavy.

“Went a little bugfuck while you were away,” Jack said, eventually. There was something about the way he said it. Something about the way he was walking towards Daniel with steady, measured steps.

Daniel swallowed. Something was going on here but he felt like he had a bad case of gate-lag. His mind wasn’t working fast enough to process it, and Jack was getting nearer and nearer and all Daniel knew was that he didn’t want to back away. “I heard.”

“Which leaves me with a difficult dilemma,” Jack said in that same even, giving-nothing-away tone. “I don’t know whether to shake you til your teeth rattle for putting me through that, or whether to kiss you to show you what putting me through that really means.”

Jack was close enough now that Daniel could feel the warmth of his breath on his face.

And suddenly Daniel didn’t want to play games or talk or dissemble. They’d played games with each other’s feelings, broken each other’s hearts for too long. He leaned in slowly, closed his eyes and touched his lips to Jack’s.  They felt dry and softer and fuller than he’d imagined. Oh, god, they felt perfect. Time slowed to a standstill.

Everything, every hug, every slap on the shoulder, every hair ruffle, every argument and apology, every moment of being _them_ had led them here, to this moment out of time.

It either started here or it all ended here.

Daniel pulled back, his heart racing.

Jack slowly opened his eyes and Daniel saw a confused mixture of joy, relief and mischief there.

“Looks like you solved my dilemma,” Jack said softly, smiling the most crooked, most beautiful of smiles.

Not an ending, then.

“Touch me,” Daniel whispered, finally saying aloud the words he’d mouthed into the lonely darkness of his bedroom so many times.

He said the words again, an hour later, into Jack’s mouth, as Jack stroked into him and made him come.

And then Jack said them, too.

Daniel didn’t need asking twice.

 

 **Season Nine**

 _Prototype_

“So, Khalek’s dead.”

“Yes he is. Can’t believe it’s taken you a whole six minutes to bring up that particular subject.”

“You shot him.”

“Someone’s been reading the reports that cross his desk for a change.”

“This one I was always going to read.”

“I did what had to be done.”

“Yes you did. Doesn’t mean you don’t feel like shit about it.”

“Actually I don’t.”

“You don’t”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yep. Okay.”

“You’re not going to try to get me to talk about it.”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Well, okay then.”

....

....

“I wish you were here, Jack.”

“I know. Me too.”

“Really want to be with you tonight.”

“Me too.”

“I miss you. Miss being held by you. Sorry, that sounds needy.”

“Not needy, just ... normal.”

“Normal ...”

“One day, Daniel.  Waking up all tangled up and with morning breath, breakfasting together, bitching over custody of the newspaper sections, arguing over whose turn it is to take out the garbage.”

“Sounds like heaven.”

“Hang in there, baby.”

“For you ... anything.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

“I love you, Jack.”

“I love you, too.  I’ll call you tomorrow. G’night.”

“Night.”

 

 **Season Ten**

 _The Shroud_

“Not Merlin’s. Not Adria’s ... mine,” Jack ground out, his breath and words coming in punched-out grunts, punctuating each hard, deep thrust.

Daniel moaned. He was beyond speech, which was right where Jack wanted him to be.

Jack lowered his body until his chest lay against Daniel’s back, warm skin on warm skin. He ran his hands up Daniel’s body, over his shoulders and down his arms until he covered Daniel’s hands with his, their fingers lacing together and tightening.

Daniel always loved the deeply intimate physical connection that came with twining of their hands. Tonight, it triggered something deep within him. He cried out and came, the contractions pushing Jack over the edge a fraction of a second later.

Jack whispered nonsense into Daniel’s hair, kissed the back of his neck, over and over, finally letting himself believe that Daniel was home.

He’d anchored Daniel to his own body, to Jack, to _them._

He slept, his body shielding Daniel’s. It was all he could do.

 

 **Post-series**

 

Jack stretched out on the dock, a pillow beneath his head, a boonie on his head and a book laid open on his stomach. Daniel usually nagged him to sit in a chair, saying the hard wood would give him backache. But Jack liked to feel the planks against his back. They were warm from the afternoon sun. Besides, Daniel could hardly nag him when he was lying beside him. Jack turned his head to look at him. He was asleep and gently snoring, his mouth slightly open. He looked adorably dumb, although Jack would never tell him so. His hair was graying at the sides but Jack thought it only made him more handsome. And more deliciously fuckable.

Jack smiled, levered up onto one elbow and reached out to stroke a thumb over Daniel’s cheekbone. He brushed Daniel’s sideburn and up into his hair.

Daniel woke but didn’t stir. He did smile, though, and it warmed Jack more than the sun in the Minnesota summer sky.

“Feels nice,” Daniel yawned.

“Good.”

Jack kept up the stroking, enjoying it every bit as much as Daniel.

“I touched your hair on the Nox homeworld. Remember?” Daniel kept his eyes shut and stretched himself awake.

“Actually, I do.”

“You’d been dead.”

“It happens.”

“I think it was the first time I touched you. It felt so great, and I felt so guilty because it felt so great.”

Jack laughed and leaned over to kiss him, taking his time, because they had lots of time now.

“It’s always felt great,” Jack said, reluctantly leaving the feel and taste of Daniel’s lips behind.

Daniel opened his eyes, a lifetime of love and affection in his gaze.

“Yeah,” he said, reaching up to return the kiss. “It has.”

 

ends


End file.
